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CFP: Society for LGBTQ Philosophy

APA Central Division Meeting

March 2, 2016 – March 5, 2016, Chicago, IL

In a 2014 interview, Susan Stryker described the relationship between the first and second volumes of The Transgender Studies Reader as follows: “[The first volume] includes work from the ‘transgender moment’ of the early 1990s that changed the conversation on trans issues and tackles many of the topics that were of interest in the field’s first decade—questions of self-representation, diversity within trans communities, the increasing visibility of trans-masculinities. The second volume, from 2013, showcases the rapid evolution of the field in the 21st century, which is self-consciously moving in strongly transnational directions away from the Anglophone North American biases of the field’s first decade. There has been much more attention paid to the relationship between transgender issues and other structural forms of inequality and injustice, and, post 9/11, to questions about borders, surveillance, and security—and the ways that non-conventionally gendered bodies experience heightened scrutiny and limitations on movement, and can be seen as posing a terroristic threat to the body politic.”

Alongside these transnational trends within the field of transgender studies, the Society of LGBTQ Philosophy wishes to highlight recent issues and debates in transgender studies as significant in the context of U.S. philosophical discourses for several reasons as well. First, the publications of The Transgender Studies Reader 2 and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the first journal exclusively dedicated to the field of transgender studies, coincide with increasing forms of representation of transgender and gender non-conforming persons in various news, entertainment, and social media. Such forms of representation also highlight how race, class, and citizenship status remain significant factors in determining how likely transgender and gender non-conforming persons are to become targets for police violence, hate crimes, and harassment. Second, social organizing work by transgender activists, especially transgender women of color activists, has gained public attention in recent years. For example, Jennicet Gutiérrez recently made headlines with her public call to President Barack Obama to address the violence against immigrant transgender women in U.S. detention centers. Third, with significant shifts in U.S. legislation, including the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage, it remains increasingly important to observe the often complicated relationship between LGB rights and transgender and queer rights.

For the upcoming 2016 Central Division Meeting of the APA, the Society for LGBTQ Philosophy invites submissions for panel and/or paper abstracts on topics stemming from themes within the field of transgender studies. We invite submissions on all philosophical topics and conversations in transgender studies, as well as recent work addressing transgender issues in relation to prison abolition, healthcare activism and biomedicine, police and state violence, queer crip theory and disability studies, decolonial thought, and transnational politics.

Please send paper and/or panel abstracts of no more than 500 words to slgbtqphilosophy@gmail.com by September 1, 2015. Please also include names, institutional affiliations, and paper titles with all submissions.